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"Ah, bingo," Roger said. "The Krath population problem!"
"The Krath population problem" Kosutic agreed. "My guess is that it was cultural contamination—and not accidentally, either. There was a satirical piece by an early industrial writer about the Irish... . What was his name? Fast? Quick?"
"Swift?" Pahner asked. " 'An Elegant Solution' or something like that. 'Let them eat their young.' "
"Yes," O'Casey agreed. "But what Swift didn't realize was that there were societies where, for all practical purposes, that was what happened. In fact, one of the major factors influencing the rise of Christianity in Roman culture was its proscription against infanticide. There is a drive towards it, but it isnot widely supported. Roman matrons, given the choice of saying 'My God forbids it' jumped on board by the thousands. It was that proscription, along with the acceptance of the Rituals of Mithras as the standard Mass, that created the Catholic church."
"The Rituals of what?" Despreaux asked plaintively. "You're going too fast."
"I'm just sort of sitting here with my jaw on the table," Roger told her with a snort. "I'm not even trying to understand half of it."
"The Rituals of Mithras," Fain put in, lifting up so that more than just his ears and horns were out of the steaming water. "One of the conversations the Priestess and I had. As a political ploy to gain the support of the Roman Army, the early Christians took the entire series of rituals from a religion called the Mithraists and turned it into their Mass."
"If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the early Christian church was very impressed with the Mithraists," Kosutic said sourly. "But at that point the Christians had two of the major political forces in Rome on their side: the Army, which switched to Christianity in droves as soon as they saw that it was just Mithras in another guise; and the matrons who no longer had to throttle their excess children. The rest is known history—the Emperor converted, and it was all over but the shouting. And let me tell you, that was ferociously argued—and occasionally warred over—for nearly two thousand years after it could be debated in public. But in the end, the preponderance of evidence pointed to that being the pattern, rather than his mother telling him he had to do it.
"On the other hand," she noted, "it has little or nothing to do with the Krath, other than as an example of the intersection of religion and politics."
"Can I ask one thing that's bothering me?" Roger said.
"Ask away, Your Highness," the sergeant major replied.
"You used the present tense a lot when discussing the cult of Baal and its sacrifices," Roger said carefully. "And I recall you saying something about 'the Brotherhood of Baal' among the Armaghans ..."
"The Brotherhood does not practice human sacrifice," Kosutic said, then waggled her hands. "As far as I know. Although they do have the occasional death under the 'enhancement' rituals, which might count. They certainly do not practice ritual infanticide. The Church of Ryback, on the other hand, has a variety of Baalian influences."
"The Saints," Pahner said. "I wondered when you'd get to the point."
"The Saints," the sergeant major said with a nod. "There are various ... word choices and phrases in the Church of Ryback that indicate to comparative theologians that it was influenced by the New Cult of Baal, which was formed—and died—during the Dagger Years. Also, the Rybackians have various sub-cults, which are, ahem, more 'fundamental' than others."
"I notice that you say 'ahem' when you're trying not to say something," Roger observed. "What was that'ahem'?"
Kosutic sighed and shook her head.
"There are ... rumors that are generally discounted about some of the sub-cults of Ryback eating their young. Personally, I don't put much faith in them. You hear that sort of thing about all sorts of hated sub-groups. But ... I also wouldn't put it past them, either. Anyway, you can imagine their reaction to the overcrowding of the Krath. Never prove it, though."
"And we could be wrong," O'Casey pointed out. "There's the whole influence of the spaceport, the original survey team, the previous group of archeologists ... It could have been any of them, or spontaneous serial development, for that matter."
"Oooo, like pyramids?" Kosutic asked with one eyebrow arched.
"Well ..." O'Casey blushed faintly and actually wiggled in the water. "In this case, it's at least possible. I know that archeologists still have a bad reputation from that, but in this case it's possible. Ca
"Who don't even have wars," Despreaux whispered to Julian.
"Oh, they have them," the intelligence sergeant replied. "They just don't get noticed."
"They're empaths," she protested quietly. "How could empaths have a war?"
"You've obviously never had a Jewish mother-in-law," Julian told her under his breath.
"Sergeant Major, you're clearly having fun," Pahner interjected. "But I'm not sure that knowing where the Krath got the idea for sacrifices gets us. I think we need to concentrate on the tactics for a little bit, here."
"I think that's straightforward," Roger said. "We'll write a message to Jin. The Gastan sends it via his ru
"And in the meantime, Your Highness?"
"Well, in about five or six days, we start assembling teams and training," Roger said. "And until then, I intend to drink some wine and sit in a hot tub with my girlfriend. I suggest you do the same. Well, except the girlfriend part. You can abstain from that."
"Thanks so very much, Your Highness," Pahner said.
"No problem," the prince replied. He held out a flask and cup. "Wine?"
* * *
Temu Jin looked at the message, then at the messenger.
"Do you know what they're going to do with it?" he asked.
"I don't even know what 'it' is, human," the Shin ru
"Come on, then," Jin said, with a gesture.
The meeting was taking place at the back of the spaceport, as usual. Now Jin descended the slight slope from the edge and headed to the nearest Krath hamlet, a tiny burg called Tul by the locals. The majority of the few off-planet visitors stayed on the port reservation. The few who didn't usually exited by the main gates, and thence down the road to the Krath imperial city, called, with surprising imagination, "Krath." Very few humans, or any other visitors, for that matter, came to Tul.
On one level, that made it a bad place to hide purloined materials. The sight of a human face there was a dead giveaway that something was going down. On the other hand, the bribes were lower, and the local farmers and craftsmen reminded him of home. As long as he kept up the payments, they were unlikely to go squealing to the taxmen, who were their only contact with the central government.
And it was convenient for the purpose—which was to build up a cache against the day he needed it.
Originally, the caches had started as insurance against the possibility that Governor Mountmarch might decide he could dispense with the services of one Temu Jin. Jin was well aware that he was deep into the "knows too much; not close enough to the i